Save money - It's Your Bill!

There are plenty of ways consumers can take control of their wireless experience. I can show my clients how to save money on their cell phone bills most of the time. The analysis doesn't cost a thing, so where is the harm in having it reviewed.

The truth is that you can have your bill analyzed at any of the wireless providers as well. The differences are these: What is the incentive for them to really drastically reduce your bill? The higher the revenue that you generate for the company, the better. I am a small business and work exclusively off of referrals, recommendations and networking. The incentive for me to help you is great. The more I save you, the more likely you are to refer me to your friends and family.

There are still plenty of very savvy and genuinely caring people who work for the wireless carriers who will help you save money if you call them or go into the store and request it. That brings me to the next difference. Would you rather go the store and wait to have someone review and analyze your bill or would you rather just contact me and have me visit with you personally at a mutually convenient time?

Here are some of the things I look for when analyzing a bill and perhaps if you have the time and want to review it yourself you can look for these things on your bill.

1. Rate plan is too small. An allowance of minutes that comes with a rate plan should be enough to cover your user's monthly needs and leave a small buffer. A plan that is too small will cause significant charges in overage. I tell my customer that they can do a rough calculation of every 100 minutes of overage costs roughly an extra $50! How many customers would upgrade their rate plan by $50 and expect only an extra 100 minutes? Answer .. not any that I know of.

2. Rate plan is too large. Some users have been burnt by the overage charges in the past, so in order to prevent that from happening they have bought into a rate plan that is grossly more than they use on average. I have seen users who are paying for a $99 unlimited plan just because they have been grandfathered into it. The irony is that they were using roughly 600 minutes per month on average. They could have easily fit into a $69.99 plan and saved themselves $30/month.

3. Believing that just because you do not subscribe to a service on a monthly charge that users on your account are not using the features at a per/use charge. Example: one customer erroneously believed that because she did not sign up for text messaging service that she (and the users on her account) did not have access to it. Her daughter managed to use 3000 text messages in one month multiplied by the per/text rate at the time of 10 cents/text = a whopping $300! She believed she was saving $20/month by not adding the feature to her plan and it cost her.

4. 4-1-1 ... Information service. When a user dials 411 from their handset, they are provided with the requested information. They are allowed to request multiple phone numbers at each call but few users actually do. Users are told on the line that they can be connected to their party for no fee. Users have misunderstood that this service itself was free. The truth is that using 411 costs users a cool $1.79 or greater per call. There are several ways to get the information for free. I helped a customer last week in utilizing the other ways to get the information and saved them $28/month. Here are a couple quick tips: Text to: GOOGL (46645) with the name of the person/business you are searching followed by the zip code if you know it or if not, the city, state. You will receive a reply text with the phone number and address. Another way to get the information is to call: 1-800-GOOG-411 . Both of these methods are free other than the use of your minutes or text allowance. Worst case scenario, if you do not have text messaging, you will get charged for 2 text messages: 30 cents total versus the $1.79 charge.

5. Premium services. What does this mean when you see this on your bill? It means that the user signed up (either online or in response to a commercial with a text enrollment). An example of this can be found on many commercials with "Free Ringtone" offers. The offer details are usually printed small at the bottom of the screen and the cost of that "free ringtone" is a monthly subscription that is charged to the users bill each month. The savings for identifying these extra and often unknown charges is typically $9.99/month per subscription. Canceling these subscriptions can sometimes be confusing but most of the time they can be canceled by replying to the enrollment text to "cancel", "end", or "stop."

At the end of the day, it boils down to this, many wireless customers are over-paying and do not ever realize it. There are a significant number of customers who do not bother to review their bill unless it is grossly different than what they have been accustomed to paying each month.

Feel free to contact us (913-220-2370) if you want help analyzing and reviewing your bill.